Adoptee reunites with local family

Staff writer, with CNA

Taylor Kidd, a Taiwan-born woman sent to the US as a baby for adoption, is reunited with her older brother, Wang Pin, at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Saturday, after a separation of nearly five decades.

Photo: CNA

A Taiwan-born woman sent to the US for adoption reunited with her family in Taiwan on Saturday after a separation of nearly five decades.

Taylor Kidd, also known as Wang Yi-wen (王怡文), arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on a China Airlines flight later in the day before heading to Jhongli City (中壢), Taoyuan County, to reunite with her mother and brother.

She thanked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and airline officials for helping locating her family.

Kidd, who does not speak Mandarin and had her hair dyed blond, does not look Taiwanese at first glance. However, the 50-year-old has remained connected to the country through stories told to her by her adoptive family and an expired passport issued 49 years ago.

During her childhood in Honolulu, Kidd was told that her parents fled Shaanxi Province, China, to Taiwan during the civil war.

Shortly after her birth, Kidd’s family decided to put her up for adoption because of money problems.

With the assistance of the Parents Planning Association, the 10-month-old baby girl was adopted by a family in the US in 1963. Although the association forbids biological parents from looking for their children, Kidd’s adoptive parents always told her that she came from Taiwan, and she never stopped believing that one day she could find her family members.

She even made her son study Chinese, so he would not forget his roots. Her efforts to look for her family members went without success until her son’s Chinese teacher, who hails from Taiwan, suggested that she turn to Taiwan’s representative office in Honolulu for assistance. After receiving the request in the latter half of last year, the office asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government agencies to help.

After months of searching, good news came last week when police in Sindian (新店), New Taipei City (新北市), reported that they had found Kidd’s elder brother, Wang Pin (王彬). Wang confirmed that his little sister was sent away to the US when he was 12, and when he was shown a picture of her, he said immediately that “she looks exactly like my father.”

Since then, Kidd has talked over the phone to her brother, with the help of her Chinese-speaking son.